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Lorenzo Lotto on Vice and Virtue Victor Hurtado University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]

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Lorenzo Lotto on Vice and Virtue Victor Hurtado University of Texas at El Paso, Vhurtado2@Miners.Utep.Edu Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry Volume 1 Issue 1 Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Article 3 Inquiry 2-15-2019 Ritratto di un uomo con simboli: Lorenzo Lotto on Vice and Virtue Victor Hurtado University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pathways_journal/vol1/iss1/3 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ritratto di un uomo con simboli: Lorenzo Lotto on Vice and Virtue Abstract The ra t of Lorenzo de Tomasso Lotto (1480-1557) has until recently gained critical attention. Lotto, born in Venice to Tomasso Lotto, lived and traveled throughout Italy. The Portrait of Man with Allegorical Symbols on display at the El Paso Museum of Art is one of Lotto’s most elusive paintings. A man of about thirty years of age is portrayed on a neutral background and divides a set of six allegorical symbols in axially. He gestures toward a set of three symbols hanging from a festoon of laurel leaves: an armillary sphere, intertwined palm branches, and a full-blown bladder. A number of scholars have attempted to identify Lotto’s Ritratto as a self- portrait, a portrait of Marcello Framberti, or an Italian alchemist. These interpretations, however, are not supported by the available evidence. Confining the sitter to a particular identity limits interpretive possibilities and ignores historical and cultural contexts. Thus, this piece examines the portrait as a whole, situating it within its historical, cultural, and artistic contexts, and proposes that Lotto’s Ritratto alludes to a meaning that is philosophical, open-ended, and universal rather than specific nda particular. Keywords social justice, medieval art, Renaissance art This journal article is available in Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry: https://repository.upenn.edu/ pathways_journal/vol1/iss1/3 Hurtado: Ritratto di un uomo con simboli: Lorenzo Lotto on Vice and Virtue VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1 Published February 2019 Ritratto di un uomo con simboli: Lorenzo Lotto on Vice and Virtue By Victor Hurtado, The University of Texas at El Paso, 2018 HSI Pathways to the Professoriate, Cohort 1 Abstract: The art of Lorenzo de Tomasso Lotto (1480-1557) has until recently gained critical ​ attention. Lotto, born in Venice to Tomasso Lotto, lived and traveled throughout Italy. The Portrait of Man with Allegorical Symbols on display at the El Paso Museum of Art is one of Lotto’s most elusive paintings. A man of about thirty years of age is portrayed on a neutral background and divides a set of six allegorical symbols in axially. He gestures toward a set of three symbols hanging from a festoon of laurel leaves: an armillary sphere, intertwined palm branches, and a full-blown bladder. A number of scholars have attempted to identify Lotto’s Ritratto as a self-portrait, a portrait of Marcello Framberti, or an Italian alchemist. These interpretations, however, are not supported by the available evidence. Confining the sitter to a particular identity limits interpretive possibilities and ignores historical and cultural contexts. Thus, this piece examines the portrait as a whole, situating it within its historical, cultural, and artistic contexts, and proposes that Lotto’s Ritratto alludes to a meaning that is philosophical, open-ended, and universal rather than specific and particular. Research Keywords: social justice, medieval art, Renaissance art ​ Published by ScholarlyCommons, 2019 1 Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry, Vol. 1 [2019], Art. 3 Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry, Vol.1, Iss. 1 (February 2019) 1. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Man with Allegorical Symbols (1545). ​ ​ Lorenzo di Tomasso Lotto’s Portrait of a Man with Allegorical Symbols, or Ritratto di un uomo ​ ​ ​ con simboli, is one of Lotto’s most enigmatic paintings (Fig. 1). Executed circa 1545, in the final ​ stages of his career, the painting has been part of the El Paso Museum of Art’s permanent European Kress collection since 1954. A man, of about 40 years of age, wearing a black over gown and red doublet, is seated in a neutral background. He divides a set of six allegorical symbols axially and gestures to a set of three symbols on his left: an armillary sphere, crossed palm branches, and a full-blown bladder. Our interpretation of these artifacts is key in interpreting the painting itself. The meaning of Lotto’s Portrait has eluded scholars; some claim ​ ​ it is a self-portrait of the artist while others hypothesize it is a portrait of Marcello Framberti—a sixteenth-century physician—or a portrait of an alchemist. However, the meaning of the Portrait, ​ ​ a testament to a humanist Italy that was also engulfed in cultural flux and religious reform, was intended to be universal and open-ended rather than specific to a self- portrait or particular to a sitter. This piece analyzes Lotto’s Ritratto and argues that the evidence in question points to an ​ ​ interpretation that is much more complex, universal, and allegorical in its presentation. Lotto, a rediscovered master of the Renaissance, was Venetian by birth. He was born in 1480, to Tomasso Lotto; both of his parents were from Bergamo, Italy. Biographical material treating Lotto is extensive and rich. From 1538-1556 he kept a book of accounts, entitled Libro di spese ​ divese.1 A series of letters written to the Consorzio della Misericordia in Bergamo also reveals ​ important information about Lotto’s commission of the intarsie—wooden panels executed using ​ ​ 1 Lorenzo Lotto, Libro di Spese Diverse 1588 – 1556 (Venice: Instituto Per La Colloborazione Culturale). ​ 1 https://repository.upenn.edu/pathways_journal/vol1/iss1/3 2 Hurtado: Ritratto di un uomo con simboli: Lorenzo Lotto on Vice and Virtue Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry, Vol.1, Iss. 1 (February 2019) a wood layering technique—in Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo.2 A surviving will drafted upon his final return to Venice from in 1546 provides some insight into Lotto’s life at this time. Lotto lived during the High Venetian Renaissance, a period in which numerous gifted painters were active, including Raphael, Veronese, Tintoretto, Titian, and Giorgione. Lotto’s oeuvre, however impressive, was overshadowed by those of his contemporaries. Many scholars posit that Lotto remained an “outsider” of the Venetian painterly scene. Lotto, however, was involved in the social sphere of painting and a series of documents discovered by art historian David Rosand challenge this prevailing notion.3 One document related to unpaid rent describes Lotto as a Pictor celebrimus, “a very famous painter” in 1505. Additionally, Pietro Aretino, a ​ ​ contemporary Italian painter, described Lotto as the epitome of “goodness, good; as talented, talented.”4 In spite of these accolades, Lotto did not receive much more critical acclaim until rediscovered by renowned art historian Bernard Berenson, who published a pioneering monograph treating Lotto’s artistic personality and oeuvre. In Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in ​ Constructive Art Criticism, first published in 1895, Berenson notes that Lotto’s work exhibits the ​ influence, not only of Bellini, as noted by Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari, but also of Palma Vecchio and Alvise Vivarini.5 Just as many Italian Early and High Renaissance artists became itinerant, traveling extensively to complete a number of commissions; Lotto too traveled throughout Italy.6 His career arguably began in Treviso, where he painted the portrait of Trevisan Bishop Bernardo Da Rossi, in 1505 (Fig. 2). Seated in three-quarter pose, Da Rossi turns to his spectator. His alert eyes catch those of the beholder as his lips twitch as though speaking. He holds a scroll in his right hand, which features an emblematic ring on his index finger. The ring itself exhibits the coat of arms of Da Rossi, which Lotto conspicuously placed on the leaning shield in his 1505 Allegory meant to ​ ​ accompany the Da Rossi portrait (Fig. 3). 2 For the intarsie at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo see Mauro Zanchi, Lorenzo Lotto e l’immaginario alchemico. ​ ​ ​ ​ Le imprese nelle tarsie del coro della Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo (Clusone: Ferrari, 1997). ​ 3 David Rosand, Painting in Cinquecento Venice: Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto (New Haven: Yale University Press, ​ ​ ​ 1982): 12. 4 Frank Hewitt Mather Jr. Venetian Painters (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1936): 313. ​ ​ 5 Bernard Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Art Criticism (New York: Putnam and Knickerbocker Press, 1895); ​ ​ ​ Bernard Berenson, Lorenzo Lotto (London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1956). ​ ​ 6 See David Young Kim, The Traveling Artist in the Italian Renaissance: Geography, Mobility, and Style (New Haven: ​ ​ Yale University Press, 2014): 11-26. 2 Published by ScholarlyCommons, 2019 3 Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry, Vol. 1 [2019], Art. 3 Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry, Vol.1, Iss. 1 (February 2019) 2. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of Bishop Bernardo Da Rossi (1505). ​ ​ On exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Allegory illustrates Da Rossi’s ​ ​ own philosophical values concerning vice and virtue. In the Allegory, Lotto depicts two figures ​ ​ on either side of a tree trunk. A shield, featuring Da Rossi’s coat of arms, leans toward the figure on the right side of the composition signaling Bishop Da Rossi’s predilection for virtu. To the left ​ ​ of the tree trunk, a satyr lewdly hugs a jug of wine. Beside him, another jug spills contents within, namely salt or grain. In the darkened background, there is a gloomy, but peculiarly lush landscape, and a shipwreck. This side of the complex allegory symbolizes a life of idleness and vice. On the opposite extreme, a chubby putto, painted amid a sunny, although deserted landscape, ​ ​ contemplates instruments of humanist learning and the liberal arts.
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